Paleolithic art

Paleolithic art comprises images, sculptures, engravings, and decorated objects made during the Paleolithic, before agriculture and settled societies. Its surviving works include cave paintings and portable objects created over tens of thousands of years.

Chauvet Cave: A cave in southern France containing some of the oldest known figurative paintings. Its animal paintings show the age and technical range of European cave art.
Cave painting: Painting made on the walls or ceilings of caves and rock shelters. It is the most visible surviving form of Paleolithic image-making.
Blombos Cave: A South African archaeological site with Middle Stone Age engravings and ochre objects. Its dated artifacts push evidence for symbolic marking far earlier than European cave art.
Portable art: Small artworks designed to be carried rather than fixed to a location. Engraved tools and figurines show that Paleolithic art was not confined to caves.
Lascaux: A cave in southwestern France famous for its Upper Paleolithic paintings and engravings. Its vivid animal figures are among the best-known examples of cave painting.
Rock engraving: An image made by cutting, pecking, or scraping lines into stone. Engraved marks often accompanied painted figures or survived where pigments did not.
Diepkloof Rock Shelter: A South African site containing engraved ostrich eggshell fragments from the Middle Stone Age. Its repeated geometric marks document early design on portable containers.
Prehistoric religion: Beliefs and ritual practices inferred from archaeological evidence before written records. Ritual explanations for cave imagery remain influential but difficult to verify.
Altamira Cave: A cave in northern Spain famous for painted and engraved Paleolithic animals, especially bison. Its polychrome ceiling paintings helped establish the credibility of prehistoric art.
Ochre: A naturally occurring iron-rich earth pigment, commonly red, yellow, or brown. Paleolithic artists used ochre to color images and objects.

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